Case Number 24898

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (BLU-RAY)

The Charge

"Theatricality and deception, powerful agents for the uninitiated. But we are
initiated, aren't we Bruce?"

Opening Statement

Spectacular. Ambitious. Polarizing. And that's just Catwoman's razor-blade
high heels.

Facts of the Case

Several years after the events of The Dark Knight, things in Gotham
seem to be relatively stable. Galvanized by the shocking death of golden boy
Harvey Dent, the populace has seemingly drifted away from the crime and decay
that gave birth to the need for a man in a bat costume to drop mob bosses off
fire escapes. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale, Terminator Salvation) has hung
up his cowl and retreated to his mansion, opting to nurse a selection of
debilitating injuries and becoming the city's most famous recluse. Commissioner
Gordon (Gary Oldman, The Fifth Element) supervises a police force that
isn't nearly up to its elbows in scum as it used to be. Thing is, he's not doing
so well either, tormented by the lie he and Batman agreed to tell to preserve
Dent's reputation.

Gotham believes itself to be safe. But it's not. A new villain is on the
way, bringing with him a complex plan laden with explosions and punches to
achieve what the sociopaths preceding him failed to do: bring Earth's mightiest
city to its knees. This antagonist in known as Bane (Tom Hardy,
Inception), a fearsome masked mercenary with a love of Jacobian agitprop
and the ability to demolish concrete with his fists. Bane's machinations will
force Bruce out of retirement, but Batman's usual derring-do may not be enough
to take him down. Which means he'll have to lean on new allies in form-fitting
leather (not Joseph Gordon-Levitt).

The Evidence

The Dark Knight has been enjoying a steady presence in my personal Top
Ten All-Time Favorite Movies, so any sequel -- as inevitable as they may be,
considering these movies generate roughly the equivalent of our annual gross
national deficit -- would be coming out of the gate on tenuous ground. How could
Chris Nolan top his last Batman outing?

The short answer: He didn't. The long answer: He didn't because The Dark
Knight Rises is essentially Part 2 of "The Dark Knight" saga. As good as
Batman Begins was, Nolan's Caped Crusader debut essentially set the table
for the two-course feast that was to follow.

That's not to say that Batman Begins exists in a vacuum. On the
contrary, many plot elements are called back to directly in The Dark Knight
Rises and plot threads are explicitly tied up. But the two Dark Knight films
represent the fulfillment of the promise that we all saw in the first film, and
reveal a filmmaker raising his game to a new level, telling a story that is
bigger than a comic book and energizing it with themes which are rich,
relatable, and not at all safe.

"Safe." That's a word which pops up whenever I talk about The Dark
Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. Where Batman Begins did some
cool stuff with character and setting, it essentially played out like a standard
hero film.

Then The Dark Knight rolled in and within a few minutes the entire
landscape changed. It's my Pencil Trick Theory. After The Joker's legendary
scene, the world morphed into an anything-can-happen torture chamber. When The
Joker surfaced, you knew bad stuff was about to go down. And it did. Frequently.
Batman was the unflappable hero, but in the face of such pathology, there was a
helplessness to him, forcing Bruce to subvert the very impetus of his alter ego:
that Batman is an unassailable symbol.

That symbol is in tatters at the beginning of The Dark Knight Rises,
and the resurrection of Bruce Wayne's original vision for Batman -- explicitly
outlined in the first film -- is the primary concern of this final installment.
When Bane hits town, he brings with him that same tectonic shake-up. True, he's
not as nightmarish and unhinged as The Joker, but Bane brings with him that same
"Oh snap, things are about to get ugly" vibe. He's terrifying in an entirely
different way, trafficking in brute force and preying on the base impulses of
Gotham. He picks at the city's festering sore, leveraging fear (a clear theme in
all three films) and the selfishness of a miserable populace to quicken Gotham's
decay.

At this time, let me pause a moment to swat away any ideas that Bane's
designs mirror the Occupy Wall Street crowd in any way. Please. That's about as
dumb as the notion that the name "Bane" was influenced by "Bain Capital."
Clearly Nolan isn't a huge fan of wealth redistribution, but to think that a)
Occupy Wall Street has enough clout to influence a tent-pole summer blockbuster,
and b) Nolan would be lazy enough to use a Law and Order "ripped from the
headlines" trope to wrap up his trilogy is nonsense. Bane is a revolutionary of
the Robespierre variety, installing a contemporary Reign of Terror complete with
kangaroo courts, angry mobs, and show executions. So unless you think it's been
"too soon" since Bastille Day, I'd urge anyone to avoid the trap of assigning
the ebb and flow of contemporary politics to this film.

Besides, Nolan's after bigger game here. Throughout these three films, the
prize being fought over is Gotham City. These are Bruce Wayne's films, but
Gotham is as much a character as anyone. It's why Wayne suits up. Why Ra's al
Ghul takes his elevated-train-ride of doom. Why The Joker goes out of his way to
set up an object lesson featuring explosives-laden ferries. And why Bane employs
his sinister and seductive mini-revolution. Everyone wants a piece of Gotham,
and Batman protects her not by simply elbowing gangsters in their throats, but
by crafting an enduring icon. It's why he's eager to hand the reins to Harvey
Dent. It's why that last scene in The Dark Knight Rises is such a
homerun.

Forgive me. I'm yammering on. The fact that this stuff is super-compelling
and these stories are being told using my all-time favorite fictional character
gets my geek glands firing away like a Klobb.

Let's not forget this is, after all, a big-studio blockbuster, so it has to
deliver the spectacle. And it does. Nolan's action is more ambitious and refined
than ever; though, to be fair, nothing here eclipses the SWAT truck chase from
The Dark Knight. The opening sequence is a jaw-dropper, Bane and Batman
engage in two electric and brutal fist-fights, multiple chase scenes are pulled
off practically (quite obviously put stuntmen's lives in danger), and the
sustained siege of Gotham in the middle of the film generates righteous
white-knuckle tension.

Which all looks stunning in high-definition. Blu-ray is the only way to go
for this finale and Warner Bros. has taken particular care to ensure their
moneymaker gets the A/V love it deserves. As was the case with The Dark
Knight transfer, the aspect ratio shifts between 2.40:1 and 1.78:1, the
latter transmitting the sequences shot in IMAX. There are far more IMAX scenes
here, however, and the frequency of the variable shift is increased. Often times
in mid scene, the aspect ratio will change abruptly. It could be a bit
distracting I suppose, but I honestly did not notice it. That's probably because
I was transfixed by the 1080p picture quality, which is dynamite. We're talking
gold standard stuff here, with bleeding-edge detail bringing out the best in
Wally Pfister's master-class cinematography. Supplementing the clean visuals is
an aggressive DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track, delivering a harsh and pounding
Hans Zimmer score with power and clarity. When the guano hits the fan (Bane's
all-out assault on Gotham) and the music/effects come together in glorious
tumult, there are few sound mixes in cinematic history that can compete.

The most surprising element of this release is the shocking lack of suck
from the bonus materials. Having been thoroughly let down by the meager
offerings from The Dark Knight disc, I was expecting a similar half-baked
presentation. Still no Christopher Nolan commentary or any sort of progressive
in-movie experience, but the making-of documentaries are copious and worth your
time. They break down as follows:

Production "The Prologue: High Altitude Hijacking" (the opening
plane sequence) "Return to the Batcave" (Batcave production design)
"Beneath Gotham" (constructing the Bane hideout) "The Bat" (Batman's new
conveyance, which was built for real) "Batman vs. Bane" (the central fight
sequence) "Armory Accepted" (shooting the bombastic Waynetech armory
theft) "Gameday Destruction" (the Steeler-filthy football field
detonation) "Demolishing a City Street" (pyrotechnics galore) "The
Pit" (the amazing set design for the prison) "The Chant" (Zimmer creating
the omnipresent chant) "The War on Wall Street" (working with a ridiculous
amount of extras) "Race to the Reactor" (producing the finale)

Reflections "Shadows and Light in Large Format" (shooting in
IMAX) "End of a Legend" (cast and crew reflect on the experience)

The individual segments aren't terribly long, some clocking in at five
minutes or so, but taken together, you're looking at comprehensive and
time-killing making-of featurette. A trailer archive and print campaign art
gallery round out the set.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

Hey, I'm a Batman fanboy and everything, but I'm not oblivious to flaws. For
starters, there's a fair amount of narrative smoke and mirrors to keep the plot
twists flowing, most notably Bruce Wayne's co-prisoners' aversion to pronouns.
Also, how does Batman get all that gasoline up on the bridge so fast? And if you
look real hard, he kind of sort of breaks the one character-defining rule he
can't break right at the end. I'm sure there's other stuff, but screw you
haters!

Closing Statement

"I remember seeing Christian in the make-up chair looking very weedy and I
thought to myself 'I can handle him.' And I went and got changed into my Bane
costume and started flexing my muscles and feeling competent and then Batman
turned up and he was three feet taller than me and I was like 'Huh' and there
was a three year-old in me that was 'That...that's Batman!'" -- Tom
Hardy